{"id":30082,"date":"2017-10-30T12:16:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T19:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=30082"},"modified":"2017-10-30T12:16:52","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T19:16:52","slug":"open-thread-10302017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/30\/open-thread-10302017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 10\/30\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I&#8217;m in a big hurry to get my writing done before I leave.&#160; May the Holy Ellipsoid Orb bless my Broncos tonight.&#160; Back!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:52 (average 6:08).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-10-30-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4jBAtyY_QDY\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SenatorJeffMerkley\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Jeff Merkley Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Senator Merkley Slams GOP Efforts to Kneecap Consumer Rights<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/4jBAtyY_QDY?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Note that both Jeff Flake and Bob Corker voted FOR the legislation that Jeff is speaking against. Oregon leads the way. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/10\/29\/us\/politics\/arizona-senate-race-flake-sinema-ward-bannon.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Senator Jeff Flake\u2019s decision to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/10\/24\/us\/politics\/jeff-flake-arizona.html\" target=\"_blank\">abandon his 2018 re-election campaign<\/a> in Arizona has thrown open the Senate race there, exposing deep fissures not only on the Republican side where a nationalist insurgency is gunning for the party establishment but also among Democrats contending with a rising left.<\/p>\n<p>Establishment Democrats have high hopes for Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist who recently dined in the Blue Room of the White House with President Trump, teaches a bipartisan spin class in the House gym and has broken ranks with her own party on key votes. She was one of only seven House Democrats, for example, who voted to create a select committee to investigate the 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.<\/p>\n<p>But those impulses toward bipartisanship have soured Arizona progressives against the candidacy of a woman who rose to prominence on a biography that included time as a homeless child and an identity that includes being the first open bisexual in Congress.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are issues, murmurs within grass-roots groups and the progressive community, the environmental community and others, including immigration advocates,\u201d said Representative Ra\u00fal M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona and a co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who is withholding his endorsement of her.<\/p>\n<p>Establishment Republicans, meanwhile, are scrambling to find a candidate to replace Mr. Flake and wage a primary challenge against Kelli Ward, a former state senator who aligns herself with Mr. Trump. Ms. Ward, derided by critics as a fringe candidate and a conspiracy theorist, was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/elections\/results\/arizona-senate-republican-primary-john-mccain\" target=\"_blank\">beaten badly by the senior senator from Arizona, John McCain<\/a>, in a 2016 primary, and party leaders fear she would lose to Ms. Sinema in the general election.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I certainly prefer a more progressive alternative to Sinema, but a DINO is better than a Republican, especially Kelli Ward. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/first-read\/trump-has-big-problem-middle-electorate-n815551\" target=\"_blank\">NBC News<\/a>: <\/font>Given all of the focus on President Trump\u2019s political base \u2014 and how he\u2019s still holding on to it \u2013 our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/donald-trump\/trump-s-approval-rating-drops-lowest-level-yet-new-nbc-n815321\" target=\"_blank\">new NBC\/WSJ poll<\/a> sheds light on a less-discussed development: Trump is losing ground with the middle of the country.<\/p>\n<p>Just 34 percent of independents approve of Trump\u2019s job performance, while 57 percent disapprove (-23). That\u2019s a decline from September, when 41 percent of independents approved and 48 percent disapproved (-7). As for self-described moderates, only 27 percent approve of Trump\u2019s job, versus 68 percent who disapprove (-41). The president\u2019s overall job-approval rating stands at 38 percent \u2014 his lowest yet in the NBC\/WSJ poll.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, independents prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress over a Republican-controlled one in next year\u2019s midterm elections by 6 points, 39 percent to 33 percent, while moderates want a Dem-controlled Congress by 32 points, 60 percent to 28 percent.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">That might be barely enough to flip the House. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"1030Cartoon\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"1030Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1030Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"418\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in a big hurry to get my writing done before I leave.&#160; May the Holy Ellipsoid Orb bless my Broncos tonight.&#160; Back! Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 3:52 (average 6:08).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do. Short Takes: From YouTube (Jeff Merkley Channel): Senator Merkley Slams GOP Efforts to Kneecap <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/30\/open-thread-10302017\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}